noodles

For dinner tonight, consider the noodle bowl. Whether you go in delicately with chopsticks and loud slurping, as is tradition, or insist upon winding noodles onto a fork no matter how they protest — few meals are as comforting, filling and easy to pull off. While a couple of these dishes err on the side of "harder to make, but therefore more awesome," you're not going to turn your nose up at a Voltaggio-penned ramen recipe, are you? 

You know how sometimes you really need a boost of luck and you cross your fingers? Yeah, if I keep mine crossed any longer, they're going to fall off and I'll lose two very important typing appendages. So I'm going to improvise a little hipster witchcraft and combine a Chinese New Year tradition with the need for a little kismet as we approach 2013, and scarf noodles until something good happens. Here are my options.

Boy, was the last week or so inspirational for me in the "pantry recipes" department. I had kind of forgotten about peanut sauce when I re-discovered my jar of peanut butter and found I had nothing to spread it on. Thankfully I had a ton of noodles, and plenty of the necessary, optional and "now you're just showing off" ingredients you need for creating the Asian peanut sauce of your dreams.